Web Research

Research boating news, trends, and sources for content ideas.

Firecrawl Setup

Firecrawl is our primary web scraping and search tool. It handles JS-heavy sites that web_fetch can't render.

API Key: Set via environment variable before use:

bash

export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=fc-89973fb14e404b418666d0fd9f2fa421

Plan: Hobby — 3,000 pages/cycle, 5 concurrent requests. Use credits wisely.

Check status:

bash

firecrawl --status

Firecrawl Commands

Scrape a single page

bash

firecrawl scrape <URL> --only-main-content --format markdown

Options:

•--only-main-content — strip nav, footers, ads (almost always use this)
•--format markdown — output as markdown (default). Also: html, links, screenshot, summary
•--format markdown,links — multiple formats output JSON
•--wait-for <ms> — wait before scraping (for slow-loading pages)
•--include-tags <tags> — only include specific HTML tags
•--exclude-tags <tags> — exclude specific HTML tags
•--json — output as JSON
•-o <path> — save to file

Search the web

bash

firecrawl search "<query>" --limit 5

Returns title, URL, and snippet for each result. Great for finding articles to scrape.

Map a website's URLs

bash

firecrawl map <URL>

Returns all discoverable URLs on a site. Useful for finding article indexes.

Crawl a website

bash

firecrawl crawl <URL>

Crawls multiple pages. Use sparingly — eats credits fast.

Research Approach

Use Firecrawl search and scraping to find:

•Boating news — industry trends, new regulations, seasonal events
•Local conditions — marina openings, waterway changes, new ramps
•Content opportunities — topics captains care about that we're not covering
•Competitive content — what other boating publications are writing about

Key Boating Magazine Sources

Scrape these with Firecrawl (JS-heavy, won't work with basic fetch):

•Boating Mag — https://www.boatingmag.com (how-to, gear, boat tests)
•Salt Water Sportsman — https://www.saltwatersportsman.com (fishing techniques, game fish, gear)
•Sport Fishing — https://www.sportfishingmag.com (offshore, destinations)
•Discover Boating — https://www.discoverboating.com (beginner-friendly, gear guides, how-tos)
•Yachting — https://www.yachtingmagazine.com (cruising, electronics, gear)

All Firecrown brands (Boating, SWS, Sport Fishing, Yachting) share a similar site structure:

•How-to: /how-to/
•Gear: /gear/ or /fishing-gear/
•Boats: /boats/ or /fishing-boats/

Search Strategies

Boating news:

bash

firecrawl search "Florida boating news 2026" --limit 5
firecrawl search "Tampa Bay marina news" --limit 5
firecrawl search "FWC Florida boating regulations update" --limit 5

Seasonal content ideas:

bash

firecrawl search "Florida boating winter tips" --limit 5
firecrawl search "Tampa Bay fishing February report" --limit 5

Magazine content to copycat:

bash

firecrawl scrape https://www.boatingmag.com/how-to/ --only-main-content --format markdown
firecrawl scrape https://www.saltwatersportsman.com/how-to/ --only-main-content --format markdown

Then scrape individual articles for detailed content to adapt.

Content Gap Analysis

After research, cross-reference findings with the library:

bash

skip card list --limit=50 --json

Ask yourself:

•Are there topics captains would care about that we have zero cards for?
•Are there seasonal stories we should be producing now?
•Are there new regulations or events that warrant timely content?
•Are there evergreen topics that would be valuable for new locations?
•What are the magazines covering that we're not?